If you've spent any time reading my blog, you'll already know I love my private clients. They're usually very respectful and understanding and most of them are willing to pay good money for timely service and quality writing.
However, occasionally I'll get enquiries from people wanting me to deliver top-notch service for pennies. They seem to believe my services aren't worth nearly as much as theirs and they work hard to try and make me reduce my prices to suit their own budget.
I don't work this way.
Today I received an enquiry from someone asking me to do quite a bit of work to a VERY badly written ebook. This would have taken me most of a day to complete. However I quoted an amount that is slightly lower than my usual fee and would NOT compensate me adequately for my time and effort
This person agreed, sent me the ebook (which is how I know it was so badly written) and then decided that it was suddenly way too expensive for him to pay. He wanted to push me for a cheaper price again.
Now... this particular person is selling the poor-quality ebook for €37 (Euros), which is $55 US. On a particular forum I'm a member of, there is evidence that this ebook is selling very well, so the person is making plenty of profit.
It's just a shame that he/she doesn't respect his/her customers enough to sell them something worth reading.
So... if you're ever in a situation where you get clients wanting to undercut your rates, STAND YOUR GROUND. They're making plenty of money from your time and effort and they're treating you like a second-class citizen when they believe you're only worth paying $1 per hour.
There are just too many good clients out there to waste time on tire-kicking time wasters who won't value your time or your writing for what they're worth.
:p
5 comments:
It never stops to amazing me how some people expect writers to work for nothing. It's always "so easy" to write or "won't take long at all." Very frustrating!
Cheers to that! Imagine the emails I get asking for prices to be cut to less than 1/3 of the listing price. :)
Hello Bianca, how are you doing? I am pretty new to writing blogs and if anyone ever told me that I would be doing this a couple years ago I would of said that they were crazy.
I have written more in the last 2 years then I have my entire life. I know I have a lot to learn, especially punctuation and getting the words to flow perfectly.
It is a lot harder then I would of thought it would be and for those of you who do this professionally deserve more respect for your art.
It is unfortunate that the people that try to under cut your rate because they think what you do is easy. Only if they knew how hard it actually is to write. I have a favor top ask you.
I recently published an article about the banks and would like you to take a look at it and let me know if there is an area that I should focus on for my future writings.
Thank you for you time and look forward to your opinion. Have a great Holiday. The link is Dealing with your debt
The problem, of course, is that there are people in other parts of the world for whom $1.00 per hour is a decent wage. Welcome to the competitive world of Globalization!
The good part about those who are willing to accept $1 per article is that their own lack of conversational English training often trips them up. The overly formalized Engish they use in articles makes them sound as though English really is their second language - my clients are paying higher rates for a different kind of work.
If they are happy to try and undercut me or aim at cheaper writers, I say good for them. I have plenty of other clients who are willing to pay me what I'm worth. I'll deal with them, thanks.
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